


In deference to a punctured lung

by boxoftheskyking



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief, Scott Dies, Stiles Dies, Suicidal Thoughts, it's not pretty, there you go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-12 17:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/pseuds/boxoftheskyking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small collection of deaths.  They aren't clean, they aren't slow, they aren't sweet, and they aren't pretty.<br/>Ch. 1 - Stiles Dies</p><p>“Fuck no. No way am I having a ‘Stay gold, Ponyboy’ moment. Not with you. Not … you.”</p><p>Ch. 2 - Scott Dies</p><p>“Don’t say his name.” He presses the gun against Aiden’s forehead, breathing hot in his face. “Don’t you say his name.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stiles Dies

**Author's Note:**

> Title bastardized from a Daredevil Christopher Wright album. Might keep this thing going with various death scenes. Injury scenes. Things that could puncture one's lung.  
> Bit stolen from SE Hinton, should be fairly obvious.

Stiles coughs, gut-deep with a splatter of red and black across the grey of the pavement. Derek can hear the low wheeze of a punctured lung, the bubble at the end of every inhale.

“Fuck,” Stiles hisses. “Fuck, fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuckffff—”

Derek squeezes him tighter, and his voice cuts off into a squeak of pain.

“I don’t know what— I can’t— I don’t know what to do,” Derek sounds angry, furious, but his voice is all over the place. Stiles smiles a little, though he knows it’s cruel to think he sounds like a little kid, voice breaking. He tries to turn in Derek's arms, but Derek won't let go.

“Let me— Come on, let me see you.”

“No. No, you won’t be able to breathe.”

“Derek. Don’t make me say it.”

“No. I can fix it. I can fix it.”

Stiles laughs a little, wheezing. He gets his hands under himself and pushes over halfway so he’s faced in towards Derek’s chest.

“You don’t fix things. I fix things. You fuck them up.”

Derek sounds like he’s being stabbed. Stiles doesn’t think it’s fair; he’s the one full of holes and crushed vertebrae.

“Ah. Ah, shit. Shit.” He shudders, and his vision starts to spot.

“Stiles. Stiles! Come on. Come on, man. Keep talking. We’ll get help soon. Just keep—”

“Help from fucking—” he gasps wetly— “where? Don’t even … phone … fuck.”

“Just keep talking. Please keep talking.”

Stiles doesn’t think it’s fair that Derek gets to lose it. Why does Derek get to freak out, cry, hold him in shaking arms like Stiles is one of his own organs, like Stiles’s his heart and he’s being ripped out? How is that fair? 

“Fuck no. No way am I having a ‘Stay gold, Ponyboy’ moment. Not with you. Not … you.”

“I’m sorry.” Derek sounds so young it makes Stiles want to kill something. Stiles butts him with his head. Can’t move his arms. “I’m sorry.” Stiles butts him harder, vision turning red. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’m—”

Stiles growls at him, coughs up blood onto his chest. He tries to speak, but his voice is gone. For the first time in his life, his voice is gone. He stops struggling against Derek’s hold, lets himself be turned and cradled as he gapes, mouthing words and staring up at Derek’s streaky face.

“Oh God. Oh my God.” Stiles thinks is nice of Derek to say it for him. Can’t remember why he was angry. Nothing to be angry about. He tries to take a breath, but it bubbles in his chest and he chokes instead. Can’t … Something important … Something to say. Isn’t there always something more to say?

He moves his elbow. It takes all of his strength, but he bends his elbow and grabs ahold of Derek’s sleeve. If Derek would just stop shaking … 

“D—” he can’t get anymore out, things are getting spotty. Colored spots with black at the center, like when he leaves his eyes open too long. Stares into the sun. 

“What? What? It’s okay. It’s okay, I’ve got you. I’m here, I’ve got you.”

He should say something sarcastic. Stay in character. But he can’t …

“D—,” he chokes again, twisting the sleeve in his fingers. “Stay—”

He tries for another breath, but fails. Shudders, jerks, gasps. Stills. Sinks. 

Derek doesn’t move. His mouth is moving, but no words come out. He gasps, chokes, falls silent. 


	2. Scott Dies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott dies.

She asked for a moment alone, and of course he gave it to her. He needed her to ID the body, legally, even though he knows and Deaton knows and Derek knows and everybody knows that it's Scott on that table, under that sheet. 

Stiles lost his phone yesterday, or it got stolen, so somebody had to track him down. The Sheriff is terrified, more terrified of facing his son than he was of facing Melissa. He didn't have to  _tell_  Melissa. Stiles--

\--stumbles around the corner in a flail of limbs, screeching to a halt in front of his father.

"What's happening? Deaton told me some ridiculous story about Scott and the alphas and _wolfsbane_ , but I know he's just trying to get me to hustle. And, I mean, that's just n-not--"

His father wraps his arms around him, forcing him still and rocking him softly.

"Dad. Dad, let me-- Why are you crying? You can't cry, you're on the clock. Come on, come on, Dad."

"I'm sorry, kid. I'm so-- By the time anybody got there, it was too late. We'll find them, though, we will."

"No, this is bullshit. This is  _bullshit_. Where is he? Let me see him."

"Melissa's in there now, Stiles, you have to wait--"

He rips himself away and bursts through the door.

"This is bullshit."

She is sitting in a chair, bent eye-level with the curve of Scott's cheek. She's picking at her nails and staring at him, focused. It is much better to look at her. She is better to look at than the frozen face with purple lips.

"Get out of here, Stiles."

"What are you doing?"

"I am waiting for my son. Get out of here."

"No, but I-- Scott. I. I." He steps past her to the table hands hovering over the body. "Why are his lips purple?"

"Effect of wolfsbane. Deaton says."

"But--" he touches a finger to the cheek, jerks his hand away. "That's not Scott. Close, yeah, almost close enough. There's a doppelganger, a skinwalker, a spell. A spell! And they almost got us, they did, but that mole, right there behind his ear? That's not Scott. It's not, it's not him, it's not--"

"Get out of here, Stiles. Does a closed fucking door mean nothing to you?"

"What do you mean  _waiting for him_?"

"If a little pissant like Jackson can come back after an hour--"

"That was-- That was a wound! This is wolfsbane this is different. I did the research: it attacks the vital organs, thickens the blood like venom so oxygen can't get to the brain, to the heart, to--"

"I'm waiting for him." He can't stop facts from pouring out, even though he stares at him like he's speaking Greek. He did the research; once he's read it, he can't unlearn--

"Jackson was-- That wasn't wolfsbane! He wasn't like this, he wasn't like Scott! Scott isn't a monster, Scott isn't  _unresolved_ , Scott doesn't have  _demons_ \--"

She rises in a sudden burst, her fist catching him next to his left eye. "Get the fuck out of here, Stiles!"

He stumbles into the table and brushes against Scott's arm and then he dies.

He thinks he dies.

He doesn't, really, he just sinks to the ground and stops breathing until his father picks him up and pushes his head down between his knees. Someone comes for Melissa, a nurse, and she fights but eventually is dragged from the room. No one has faces, no one but him and Melissa. They're the only real people in the room. His dad says something, he responds, a car appears for a moment, his dad says more things and he nods and nods and makes promises, and then he is alone on his couch with a blanket over his shoulders, in pajamas. He blinks in the midafternoon light, which takes him by surprise, somehow. There aren't any windows in the morgue. 

His doorbell rings and he doesn't even think to not answer it. Danger doesn't even cross his mind, his survival instincts gone along with his understanding of time. 

He opens the door and finds Death. One of the faces of Death, looking up from under long lashes. Guilty.

"You're coming here?" he chokes. He wishes he could yell, or at least sound like a tough guy, but he's too shocked to say anything. "You're showing your face at my door? You're coming  _here_?"

Aiden stares at him, looking like an actor who just walked onstage to an unfamiliar play. It gives Stiles a second to reach into the drawer of the mail table, the drawer that's been unlocked since his dad found out about werewolves.

He doesn't shoot Aiden in the head. Because he has to know, right? He always has to know.

"I'm sorry," Aiden says, and he's choking, too. He's healing, but there's blood in his teeth. "It wasn't right, what they did. I'm sorry they did it."

"There's no 'they,' there's just you." He shoots him again.

"I wouldn't. I wouldn't have done it. I don't kill people, not like that."

"You're an alpha." He shoots again. "That's what you do. Your eyes." He shoots again. "You don't get that from being a fucking Quaker."

"Not like that, though. He wasn't a threat, not on his own. Scott--"

"Don't say his name." He presses the gun against Aiden's forehead, breathing hot in his face. "Don't you say his name."

"He called you. Here." Aiden holds out his lost phone, taking a step back when he takes it. Stiles pulls the trigger, but the gun is empty. Aiden turns and leaves, head down, not looking like an alpha at all.

Stiles stumbles back inside, drops the gun in the hallway, and lets his knees give out in front of the coffee table. He turns the phone on, setting it carefully on the table like he's scared to hold it in his hands. It buzzes with a Missed Call and Voicemail message, a picture of Scott flashing on the screen. He's shirtless and laughing, playing a crosse like a guitar. Stiles screams.

He puts his head down onto the table and screams, a long, bloody thing that tears up his throat and makes his head ache. His teeth vibrate, his nails tear into the carpet and he screams at the phone like it's something that might respond, fight back. When his voice is gone, he turns to the side and throws up onto the carpet. Then he calls Melissa. 

By the time she walks in - he'd forgotten to lock the door - he has moved to the couch and has his phone balanced on his knee. 

"What's that smell?"

"I threw up."

"No, gun powder."

"Oh. Aiden came by. The gun's - " he waves a hand vaguely- "somewhere."

"I didn't see a body."

"Shot him in the chest. He gave me my phone back."

"What about after?"

"Out of bullets."

She sniffs and sits down next to him, carefully. "Did you listen to it?"

"No."

"Put it on speaker?"

"Yeah."

He does, dials his voicemail, waits. Pushes the right buttons, until he hears Scott's panicked voice.

"Hey, Stiles, I know you lost your phone-- Oh, crap. Okay, that definitely wasn't a coincidence. Look, I know you can't get here, and I don't have a lot of . . . They have me locked in somewhere and I can't get out and I think they have Derek somewhere, too. I hope he's okay. Look, they gave me wolfsbane, there was a needle, and I fought, I really did-- I don't . . . Stiles, you have to take care of my mom, okay? Even if she doesn't let you. And the rest of the pack. And tell Derek that I'm sorry and we should've been working together. Find Allison. You have to-- She's a good person, I know she is, and I'm scared that she doesn't know it or she doesn't believe it. You have to remind her, okay? And--" he breaks off with a choking cough, wet and retching. "Okay. Um, Stiles? Are you . . . Oh, right." He giggles a little, muffled. "I forgot it was a phone. Ha. Okay, I'm getting sleepy. Stiles, I really love you. A lot. And I think there was probably a reason I didn't say it all the time, like, every day, but I can't remember what it . . . I just do. Okay? I wish I could hear you. I love your voice. Stiles. Your voice is the best, just the best voice that there is. You're gonna be great. You're already great, but I mean you're gonna be even better. You always say you're my sidekick or whatever, but you know I'm the one that follows you. I always follow you. I really love your voice. You gotta, you gotta, you take care of my mom. You and your dad, you gotta. Okay? You--" A cough, a choke, silence.

He looks up at Melissa and watches a life flash in front of her eyes. She blinks at the phone as the message runs out, mouth hanging vacantly like a corpse. 

He thinks very seriously for a long, long moment. He knows where the ammunition is, of course he does. If he sits behind her, if he holds onto her and lines up their skulls . . . He has a medicine cabinet. She's a nurse. She would know exactly . . . He has a kitchen. Full kitchen, full knife block, they could figure something out, the two of--

"I want to die," she says very clearly to her knees.

"We can't." It comes from nowhere, skips off his tongue with no permission from his brain.

"Yes, we can." She looks up at him, suddenly confused. "Why 'we'? Where is the 'we' coming from? Since when are we-- ?"

"Since always. We-- He's the sun, right? He's the planet and we orbit him. You and me, we're--"

"It's not the same. For you and for me, it's not close to the same."

He thinks she might punch him again, so he leans back into the arm of the couch.

"Like Jupiter's moons. Right? They have to know each other."

"You're not making any sense." She laughs at him, sort of. "You never make sense."

"We can't leave them. They  _need_  us, Melly, they do."

He hasn't called her that since he was ten and he knows it and he knows she knows he knows.

She drops her head down on her knees and says his name - his, not Scott's - and it's kind of a wail and kind of a howl and mostly a plea or an argument or an accusation and he just worms his way under her elbows until they are one shaking mass of raw, wounded flesh, a barely functioning pair of lungs cradling a dead heart between them. He sobs into her lap and her fingers dig bruises into his hips and his arms and she soaks the back of his shirt. When they are out of noise and dry as creaking bones, she pulls him up next to her and cradles him like a child or a pillow or the shattered remnants of a lifeboat. He blacks out, kind of, they both do, and when his phone rings again the room is almost dark. The slow kind of dark, that you don't see happening until you're suddenly blind.

He puts the phone on speaker again, holds it between their chests. 

"Yeah," he rasps.

"Do you want me to bring him back?" Peter asks, like he's asking for their takeout order or offering to give them a ride to the airport. "You know I can, you know I've done it. There's a cost. You know that too. But I'm willing--"

"I--" Stiles has nothing to say, he just needs the voice to stop. Melissa is looking at him with red, scared eyes, staring off the edge of something, not really looking at him at all. His brain soars and spins nauseating him, making him light-headed. He is paralyzed, unable to-- Just unable.

"You know where to find me, when you decide." The line goes dead.

He swallows and it echoes in the empty room. He can taste the bile still on his tongue, feel the bruise on his face from her knuckles. Her knuckles are white, wrapped in the back of his shirt, anchoring him to the couch. 

They stare at each other in stillness, and he can hear her watch ticking. The world becomes a still, dark place, where the ticking of her watch is the only sound. He forgets to breathe, and the world narrows to a pinprick of darkness in an explosion of white.


	3. Derek Dies

“You’re sick,” Stiles says, blotches coming out on his face and his neck. He’s breathing hard - must have heard from Boyd and come running.”You’re just— That’s  _sick._ ”

His voice is shaky and kind of choked, but it occurs to Scott that he hasn’t cried once, not even when it first happened and they had to drag him away from the body because he’s gone almost catatonic with his fingers twisted in Derek’s insides, trying to keep them together. He’s been pale and quiet and shaken, but forcefully stoic. He’s being like Derek; he’s trying to be what he imagines Derek would want him to be. 

Scott loves it and he hates it, the way Stiles looks up to people. He wants to pull him in and wrap him in a blanket and he want to shake him and choke him and shout  _“You’re nothing like him! You’ll never bring him back!”_

He keeps building the pyre and says nothing. Tucks the sheet under Derek’s shoulder

“Scott!” Stiles is reaching for him, but it’s like the rest of his arm can’t catch up with his hand, like he can’t convince the muscles that it’s worth the fight. “Please. Stop it. Just let him—”

“I can’t,” Scott says simply, placing another branch on the pyre and turning back. “Don’t you get it? I can’t just let him— rot. He deserves to be with his family.”

“But—”

“Ashes to ashes.”

Stiles gapes at him. Scott grabs the lighter from his coat pocket and crouches to light the newspaper and dry sticks at the bottom. Stiles doesn’t try to pull him away, but Scott isn’t sure he understands.

He doesn’t leave, anyway, so that’s something. They stand side by side as the bigger branches start to catch, the little pools of lighter fluid flaring up as the flames spread out. They try not to flinch as hot ashes blow towards them. They open their mouths and breath in through their noses and let him wash over them. Scott starts to cry, inaudible over the crackling of fat, and he feels ash and dust cling to the tracks on his cheeks. It’s gentle, brushing against his skin and sticking there, solid.


	4. Cora Dies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cora dies

"Cora? Cora, I've told you a thousand time, lock the damn--"

He keeps walking for a few steps, mometum moving him towards the stairs. She's near the top of the staircase. Her arms are hanging over the edge, head turned almost towards him as it dangles off the step. Like she was crawling up them, holding on.

Her legs are near the bottom, having crumpled and twisted on their fall away from the rest of her, stuck in the spaces between the steps a few feet off the ground. The middle of her has dropped through the cracks and keeps dripping.

He doesn't get any closer, but he does stare, wait for her to explain herself. He leans against a pillar and slides down to the ground, mind gaping and vacant.

_My sister is dead,_ he writes across the blankness of his mind, carefully printing each letter. He blinks, erases, resets.  _My sister was never alive._

It's probably only a few minutes later that Isaac bursts through the door and screams when he sees her. It hurts Derek's ears. 

"Cora? Cora, no. Cora, come on, come on,  _come on!_ " He's reaching up to touch her face but it's too high, all he can do is bump her chin a little with his fingers, shifting her torso, loosening something that falls at his feet and makes him lurch backwards.

"Derek! Derek, what happened? What happened? Who was it? How many--" Isaac crouches down in front of him, blurring in and out of focus. He takes Derek's hands, arms, which seems odd until he says, "There isn't any blood on you."

"I didn't kill her," he rasps dully.

Isaac stares.

"No, I-- I know. I know you didn't. I mean you weren't here for the-- You weren't fighting."

"She was alone."

Isaac stands, pulls at his hair, paces. He stops and bends double, wrapping his arms around his head like it's about to come apart.

"Isaac," Derek says gently. He pushes himself up onto his knees, beckons the boy over with a jerk of his head. Isaac comes, shakily.

"You should be alpha," Derek tells him. He cocks his head to one side and bares his throat. "You know everything I have to teach you, and you're a strong leader. They love you, the others. They all do."

"Derek, what--"

"I need you to do this for me. Will you?" His head leans farther back and his eyes flutter shut.

"You want me to--"

"I need you to. The pack needs you to."

"I can't. I can't just-- No, no way. You're-- You're crazy. You're crazy."

"Isaac." He smiles then, and it's gentle and warm and so peaceful it makes Isaac's breath catch. "You can. I know you can. Please, do this for me. Please. Just one last thing."

There's a long moment of silence, and Isaac feels his claws lengthen and his eyes turn. Derek smiles up at him and lets his own slip closed, just a hint of red visible between the lids.

"No," he says finally, dropping his arm. "I can't. I'm sorry, I just--"

"Isaac, please. I am begging you.  _Please_." He isn't smiling now, eyes wide, darting around like something trapped and wild. "Please, you have to. The pack needs and alpha, so I can't just--"

"Don't! You don't have to--"

"Please!" 

It echoes in the room, off the pillars and the beams and the staircase, vibrates inside Isaac's head, shakes the tears out of him. He drops down in front of Derek, covering him with arms and legs, knocking him back into the pillar as he cries into his shoulder.

"Isaac, please, please," Derek begs, voice starting to crack. Isaac doesn't know how to respond, so he just holds on tighter, rocking them awkwardly together, silently begging for Derek to hold him back.

"I'm sorry," he ends up whispering. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." And Derek's arms come up around him and lock him in and Derek is making these terrible choking sounds and shaking and Isaac's hands are so cold he tries to find somewhere to bury them and Derek lets him and holds on to him and begs and begs and begs.


End file.
